This is a research seminar in which students working in groups investigate trade goods (their production, circulation, and reception) in order to mount an online exhibition. Our focus is on the circulation of objects between Asia (taken broadly) and Europe (especially France and England) in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In-depth case studies will include lacquerwares; gazebos, pagodas and architectural forms; gardens; ceramics; wallpaper; textiles; printed books, and furniture. There will be a one-day field trip up to Denver. Prerequisite: Any 200-level art history course or Consent of Instructor. 1 unit -- Bentley

Popular critiques of capitalism are everywhere today—from presidential debate stages to the digital realms of TikTok and YouTube. But how exactly can we explain capitalism? How did it emerge, and how is it structured? Who or what maintains capitalism, and what role does race specifically play in it? The answers to these questions are not as straightforward as they may seem. Some scholars disagree as to whether race is even a constitutive element of capitalism. This interdisciplinary course reads critical theories on capitalism alongside its literary and cultural expressions in popular culture to understand how race intersects with capitalism. It traces famous theories on capitalism by thinkers like Karl Marx alongside an important tradition of radical scholarship on the intersections of race and capitalism by people like W.E.B. DuBois, C.L.R. James, Cedric Robinson, Eric Williams, Jodi Melamed, Nancy Leong, Patricia Hill Collins, Mark Chiang, Iyko Day, Lisa Lowe, and Jonathan Tran, among others. In doing so, it engages key concepts such as racial capitalism, late capitalism, identity capitalism, neoliberalism, feudalism, and techno-feudalism. To help situate these critical discourses, this class places theory in conversation with literary and cultural texts like film, television, and literature to see how filmmakers, writers, and artists have confronted capitalism in the name of social justice.

This is an advanced Chinese language and culture course, that builds on the language progress made in advanced Chinese, emphasizes application of translation and storytelling, and centers on learning Chinese culture and society through the authentic Chinese sources, original texts, and online median videos. Students will read, listen, and tell stories, watch online videos, conduct translation practice in oral and written expression, and learn a “other” culture cross-culturally.

RM300: The Model Minority is an interdisciplinary course that teaches students the social, political, cultural, and economic forces that have produced the model minority stereotype. It asks: when did the model minority stereotype emerge in the U.S., and why? How did it come to be organized ideologically and representationally in relation to wider sociopolitical forces domestically and globally? And, how did the U.S. and indeed Asia both play key roles in creating the model minority? This course traces the model minority as an evolving racial form alongside institutional and cultural developments in the U.S. and Asia from the nineteenth century to the present. Reading literary and cultural production in conjunction with academic discourse from interdisciplinary fields across Asian American Studies, students learn to approach the model minority not simply as a representational figure but also as a conceptual orientation to systems of inequality organized by race, ethnicity, class, gender, and (dis)ability in a global capitalist economy.

This is an advanced Chinese language and culture course, that builds on the language progress made in advanced Chinese, emphasizes application of translation and storytelling, and centers on learning Chinese culture and society through the authentic Chinese sources, original texts, and online median videos. Students will read, listen, and tell stories, watch online videos, conduct translation practice in oral and written expression, and learn a “other” culture cross-culturally.